oves you, and wishes to be your wife"--

"Now, what are you driving at, Popsy? For if you have nothing hanging
on your hands I have a vast lot hanging on mine, and time is
precious."

"I will tell you quite frankly what I want you to do, Mr. Martin. You
are taking mother."

"I am willing to take you too. I can't do any more."

"But then, you see, I don't want to be taken. Until you came forward
and proposed to mother to be your wife she spent a little of her money
on my education. She tells me that she has put it now into your
business."

"Poor thing!" said Martin. "She was making ducks and drakes of it; but
it is safe enough now."

"Yes," said Maggie in a determined voice; "but I think, somehow, that
a part of it does lawfully belong to me."

"Oh, come! tut, tut!"

"I think so," said Maggie in a resolute tone; "for, you see, it was
father's money; and though he left it absolutely to mother, it was to
go to me at her death, and it was meant, little as it was, to help to
educate me. I could ask a lawyer all about the rights, of course."

For some extraordinary reason Martin looked rather frightened.

"You can go to any lawyer you please," he said; "but what for? let me
ask. If I take you, and do for you, and provide for you, what has a
lawyer to say in the matter?"

"Well, that is just it--that's just what I have to inquire into;
because, you see, Mr. Martin, I don't want you to provide for me at
all."

"I think now we are coming to the point," said Martin. "Stick to it,
Popsy, for time's precious."

"I think you ought to allow me to be educated out of mother's money."

"Highty-tighty! I'm sure you know enough."

"I don't really know enough. Mrs. Ward, of Aylmer House, has taken me
as an inmate of her school for forty pounds a year. Her terms for most
girls are a great deal more."

Martin looked with great earnestness at Maggie.

"I want to go on being Mrs. Ward's pupil, and I want you to allow me
forty pounds a year for the purpose, and twenty over for my clothes
and small expenses--that is, sixty pounds a year altogether. I shall
be thoroughly educated then, and it seems only fair that, out of
mother's hundred and fifty a year, sixty pounds of the money should be
spent on me. There's no use talking to mother, for she gets so easily
puzzled about money; but you have a very good business head. You see,
Mr. Martin, I am only just sixteen, and if I get two more years'
education, I shall be worth some